With the rapid development of communication technology and further fusion of the communication technology with the Internet technology, the popularity rates of mobile services and mobile Internet technology become higher and higher. At present, the mobile communication permeability in most developed countries is even up to 100%, thus causing the increase rate of mobile users to become lower and lower, which is a problem which the global mobile operators are all basically faced with. Therefore, operators begin to seek for new increase points in the mobile communication field. On the other hand, with the rise of Internet technology, especially the rise of mobile Internet technology generated from fusion of Internet technology with mobile communication technology, a new door is opened for operators to further expand their revenue and market.
From the current emerging services, Machine-to-Machine, Machine-to-Man, and Man-to-Machine (M2M) services may become a killer service in the 3rd Generation (3G) technology and even in the 4th Generation (4G) technology. According to the prediction of a professional institute, M2M service will have a wide market in the future. Currently, operators, equipment suppliers and service providers at home and abroad actively are engaged in development and promotion of M2M services.
Currently, in the mobile communication filed and fixed communication field, concepts similar to M2M include internet of things and ubiquitous network, and M2M network includes a machine-to-machine communication network, a man-to-machine communication network and a machine-to-man communication network. Ubiquitous network refers to all information interaction networks including sensor networks, industrial control networks, broadcasting TV networks and satellite communication networks other than communication networks. In view of the range, M2M is a concept with the smallest concept range, followed by the internet of things and then ubiquitous network. Among the three concepts, one of the common points is including a terminal device (also called as a M2M terminal, an IOT terminal, or a ubiquitous network terminal, and the M2M terminal is used in the present invention) and a terminal gateway device (also called as an M2M gateway, an IOT gateway, a ubiquitous network gateway, a sensor gateway, an M2M terminal gateway, an IOT terminal gateway device or a ubiquitous network terminal, and the term of M2M terminal gateway is used in the present invention). Wherein, on one hand the M2M terminal gateway device is used to access a communication network, for example, Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) network, Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) network, an Internet, 3G, 4G, fixed communication network, and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), etc. On the other hand, the M2M terminal gateway device is used to access other networks, for example, sensor network, personal area network, fused personal network, home network, enterprise network, industrial control network, broadcasting TV network and satellite communication network, etc. In the present invention, the M2M service network is also equivalent to the IOT service network and ubiquitous network service network. Specially, the M2M is taken as the main description object in the present invention.
FIG. 1 illustrates the common M2M service application architecture at present, and the architecture includes: an M2M machine terminal access layer, a communication network\IP network layer, an M2M service platform layer and M2M application, wherein:
the M2M machine terminal access layer may be divided into two types: the first type is M2M terminal device, the first step of implementing the M2M service is the terminal device collecting data, sending out the collected data through the network, and receiving data issued by the network. Commonly, for a mobile network, a communication module is used to achieve communication with the M2M terminal, and the machine hardware is a device used to implement the M2M service; for a fixed communication network, the fixed network may be accessed by means of a network card or a modem; the second type is a M2M terminal gateway device, which, on one hand, is used to connect to the communication network (mobile communication network or fixed communication network), and on the other hand to connect to other networks, including sensor network, industrial control network, personal area network, fused personal network, satellite network, home network or enterprise network. For this type of devices, it can play the function of performing service upload and issuing, as well as data processing, control and protocol conversion, etc. by agenting and adapting the devices of other networks, for example the sensor.
Communication network\IP network: the communication network\IP network is used to transmit the M2M service data between M2M machine terminals, or play a role of connection network between the M2M machine terminal and the third-party service platform and application, and plays an important part in the whole M2M technology frame. The communication network\IP network comprises mobile communication network, broadband network, wide area network, local area network and personal area network, etc.
M2M service platform: since the M2M service needs to support many different industries, enterprise applications and home applications, based on the service capability of the M2M service platform, the M2M service platform needs to provide basic gateway service capability and M2M service environment invocation for a large number of third-party M2M application systems. The gateway service capability comprises: management, monitoring of terminals, data collection and protocol conversion, etc. As for the gateway service capability, the service platform generally has limited capability and the provided functions are simple, and thus can only support common and simple M2M applications; the M2M service environment capability generally comprises many capabilities, such as supporting establishment, edition, arrangement, generation and release of services, and these service environment capabilities are based on existing various different specific individual service capabilities, such as a large number of existing service capabilities including positioning, Geographic Information System (GIS), message, representation and Direct Message (DM). Through the logic of service environment, enhanced service capability can be provided to meet complicated M2M applications.
M2M application: M2M services can be widely applied to various industries, including large-scale enterprise application, medium-sized and small enterprise application, personal and home users, etc., and cover fields such as telemedicine, remote meter reading, public security and so on. For different industries and enterprise users, their requirements on the specific application may greatly vary with obvious differentiations, therefore, M2M application is generally developed by the users themselves, and the operators only provide standardized and universal service applications.
Since the M2M service involves many industries, and each industry uses a different application logic, each industry wishes to use its own special service platform for providing services. If a set of special service platform is deployed for each industry, the cost for M2M application promotion will be too high.
Currently, some operators already use a universal M2M service platform to provide comprehensive M2M services, i.e., an M2M service platform manages the entire network as an overall service platform, accesses the whole M2M terminal and M2M terminal gateway (called as M2M gateway in short), and provides M2M services for the entire network. Therefore, this M2M service platform needs to provide all capabilities. However, the operators only make consideration from the following two aspects when establishing the M2M platform:
one, providing basic M2M service environment for some big customers and large industry applications, and providing service redevelopment capabilities for the big customers and large industry applications;
two, for some medium-sized and small enterprises, home and personal users, since their economy capabilities are seek, it is less possible to perform second development based on the service capabilities provided by the operators, so the operators can provide some standardized M2M applications.
With the enlargement of M2M serviced volume, the operators will face with the following problems when using a universal M2M service platform to provide M2M services:
(1) Only one universal M2M service platform is deployed in the whole network, and it is hard to manage the M2M terminals and M2M terminal gateway of the whole network, mainly because the regional span is large, the number of application types is big, the load is not balanced, and problems such as single-point failure tends to occur.
(2) Currently, many industry applications are provided with respective industry or special service platforms, and these users do not want to give up the operated platform and completely reestablish an M2M service platform, and generally speaking, the service platforms established by these users themselves usually provide applications of specific industries or specific fields, for example, video monitoring, etc.
(3) As for specific applications, for example, a M2M service of large amount volume, a typical example is that an M2M terminal device collects video-type data, and at this moment the service data are generally not suitable to reach the applications via the M2M service platform.
(4) As for applications of high real time, for example, M2M applications of industrial automation control type, M2M applications of financial transaction, and the like, they all require high real time.
(5) A gateway needs to be provided for some special applications, for example, a plurality of terminals can access the same gateway, and then the gateway collects data and reports the data to the M2M service platform.